The place to take your game higher

Golf in the Swiss Alps means a backdrop beautiful enough to make you nearly forget that sliced shot, says Adam Ruck.

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Swiss golf course; The place to take your game higher

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Incredible views from the green in the Swiss Alps

12:01AM BST 21 May 2007

From its lofty perch 6,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps, grand old St Moritz surveys a string of fine water hazards and welcomes the golfer with the Viagra-like promise of extra length. We may run out of breath more quickly in the mountain air, but on the tee we are tigers. It might not be an advantage. The sight of my ball vanishing in a familiar left to right arc at the Engadine Golf Club in Samedan reminds me of the man who wrote to his club-maker in St Andrews: "Thank you for sending me your new driver. It has added fifty yards to my slice." But, as a British visitor to Samedan remarked more than half a century ago, "This must be the best course in the world on which to play badly, since if you miss a shot you only have to look at the surrounding scene and it simply does not seem to matter how one plays."

The club loves this quote, but it has never rung true with me. Show me the golfer to whom playing badly "does not seem to matter", and I will show you a purveyor of pork pies. But the mountains make a fine backdrop for golf's sweet torment, and St Moritz has many other ways to tire us out, from hiking and biking to windsurfing.

Rollerblading is the latest summer craze. On June 30 all St Moritz will turn out to see the 12th Engadine In-Line marathon won in under an hour, with racers showing un-Swiss disregard for the 50mph limit on the road down to Silvaplana.

On a more relaxing note, palatial ski hotels with all the latest spa gadgetry admit us for a fraction of their winter rates.

These days every Alpine resort wants golfers, and it is easy to understand why. Unfortunately, few ski resorts have enough flat land. St Moritz is one of the few that does: Samedan is not merely the oldest Swiss mountain golf course, it is one of the best, thanks to its situation at a broad junction of high valleys, with drainage ditches and venerable larches complicating the approach to small greens.

Now the Engadine has a second course at Zuoz. Pitched on the side of the valley, it is a slightly dislocated layout, hard on golfers who refuse a buggy. But there are challenging shots to be played, none more inviting than the first blow, from a lofted tee down to a beckoning sward of fairway. If only more courses extended such a welcome.

Nor should we overlook the charms of the Hotel Kulm's nine-hole course, on the ground first mooted for golf in the 1890s when it was a sex-segregated sport. At the Kulm, it still is.

"Most of our members are ladies, who enjoy golf without the stress of playing with their husbands," says Glaswegian pro Robert Crerar who spends his summers teaching at the Kulm. As he admits, a course whose longest hole measures less than 160 yards from the back tee won't tempt the macho golfer who is always itching to belt a ball out of sight. But there is a time and place for honing our short-game skills; the Kulm before supper is it.

Its greens are the best in the Engadine. "There's no secret to this job," says greenkeeper Marco Schmied. "You just have to love it, clear the snow by hand in April and shut the course when it's frozen in the morning." As it often is, even in midsummer.

St Moritz would like to think its 50 holes are enough to keep us entertained all week, but the temptation to turn mountain golf into a touring holiday may be too much to resist. Start with the beautiful drive over the Albula pass to Davos, via Bad Alvaneu's fine new course. From the early days of Alpine tourism, Davos was St Moritz's great rival for health and sports. Skiing caught on more quickly at Davos, thanks in part to the writings of Dr Arthur Conan Doyle, a skiing pioneer.

The creator of Sherlock Holmes also tried to introduce golf, but was unable to outwit the local cows, which trampled the greens and devoured red flags. It was not until 1920 that Davos finally opened its golf club, at the foot of the Jakobshorn ski slopes.

A more ambitious tour, by car or train, will take us across southern Switzerland via hairpins and high passes to the vineyard slopes and French-speaking villages of the Valais, to the resort of Crans-sur-Sierre. Its setting on a broad south-facing balcony above the Rhone Valley was just right for the sanatorium business, and suits golf equally well.

Crans hosts Switzerland's only PGA Tour event, the European Masters, every September on a panoramic course whose sole failing has been excess generosity: the tournament pros plundered so many birdies and eagles, Crans called in Ballesteros to bolster its defences. Now, where once a friendly crater green stood ready to gather in our approach shots, a hostile domed one awaits. Other tweaks, such as the pond in front of the 18th green, also bear a Spanish signature. Holiday golfers might wish Seve had left well alone. Carding a respectable score occasionally is no bad thing.

Of all the ski resorts in south-west Switzerland that would love to be mentioned in the same golfing breath as Crans, the best is Villars, which, being low and south-facing, is feeling the pinch of climate change more acutely than most of its winter rivals.

In summer, it would be hard to think of a better Alpine bolthole. On the gentle pastures above the village, farmers welcome hikers to wooden chalets. Here we can rest our legs, enjoy the incomparable view of Mont Blanc, and use the pitch-mark repair tool on our Swiss Army golf penknife to attack a home-made cheese.

A happy outcome is less certain at Villars Golf Club, a hybrid course that starts with nine charming old holes, followed by nine horribly technical new ones.

St Moritz's annual Power Golf competition does make one wonder, however, if the Swiss really get golf. This event, at the Kulm in late June, is no more and no less than a golf race. Last year's winner chipped, putted and sprinted round the course in a shade over 16 minutes, thereby demonstrating, as a brisk marketing person informed me, "that golf can be a game for modern people in a hurry." I'm sorry, but it can't. If your objection to golf is that it takes too long, you are missing the point entirely.

Essentials

Getting there

Swiss Travel Service (0870 1917170; www.swisstravel.co.uk) oragnises stay-put or multi-centre holidays.A week in July, including London/Zurich flights, car hire and half-board accommodation (three nights at the five-star Hotel Kulm in St Moritz, one at the four-star Hotel St Georges, Crans, and three at the four-star Hotel du Golf in Villars) costs £925 per person in a shared double room.Golf holidays in Villars are also offered by Swiss Holiday Company (0870 041 8844; www.swissholidayco.com) and OTP Holidays (0871 871 8084; www.otp.co.uk).If you prefer to travel independently, Swiss International Air Lines (0845 601 0956; www.swiss.com) has flights to Zurich from London Heathrow, London City, Manchester and Birmingham from £89.Hotel Kulm (www.kulmhotel-stmoritz.ch) has a three-night, half-board package from £385 per person, which includes one massage, driving range and three green fees (Samedan, Zuoz and Kulm).The Engadine Golf Club at Samedan (www.engadin-golf.com) offers three- and five-day courses for beginners and improvers.